Dad 'n Me is the classic Newgrounds beat 'em up. The game consists of 10 screens where one must defeat every enemy to proceed, and ends with a boss fight.

The input file provided in the submission will sync in the game's native 640x480 resolution. For encoding purposes I also made a file which syncs at 1440x1080, available here.

The movement is pretty simplistic, the only real depth being that double-tapping a sideways direction will make Son sprint, allowing faster movement and damaging enemies on contact.

The combat is also rather simple, with few enemies actually fighting back, the game becomes more about hunting down the opponents and not letting them slip away rather than a challenging fight. The most important thing to keep in mind optimization-wise is that one is only allowed to proceed to the next screen once all enemies from the current screen have disappeared, and they only begin disappearing once they're on the ground, undisturbed. This means that any attacks that send the enemies flying can be detrimental when used incorrectly.

Son is able to perform light and heavy attacks, which can combo when done in the correct order, showing a special animation. Through this run I mainly use two combos:

Light Attack Light Attack Light Attack Heavy Attack
The name should be pretty self-explanatory. This combo, which does not have a special animation, stunlocks any enemy until I stop attacking. This combo is very useful in taking out tankier enemies, as well as dropping enemies directly to the ground once the combo is over.

Light Attack Light Attack Light Attack Light Attack Heavy Attack Heavy Attack Heavy Attack
This combo fully depletes the health bar of a standard enemy and is faster than chaining the stunlock until said enemy dies. The downside to it is it kills the enemy in the air, making them fly quite a while before hitting the ground. This makes it very useful in getting rid of enemies quickly, but should not be used on the last enemy of the group.

In addition to these, I occasionally use a sprinting heavy attack to knock enemies forward for later, knock enemies off quad bikes or move further along in cutscenes once control has been taken away.

While the enemy types and amounts are consistent across playthroughs, a majority of the movements is completely reliant on RNG. Ways of manipulating RNG are also rather limited, making optimizing the individual fights quite a chore.

A large portion of the movement in this run relies on RNG and so there's certainly lots of room for improvement on enemy patterns alone. Getting them to bunch up in one spot and be hit all at once is the biggest timesave one can hope for throughout the run, and while I believe to have done quite well manipulating what I could, I'm sure there's many better patterns to find.

As for execution mistakes, at the end of the third screen I accidentally sprint into the pile of dead bodies, knocking them over and making them bounce. This unnecessarily delays the screen transition by 22 frames. Unfortunately I only noticed this while rewatching the TAS after finishing it, and attempting to fix it lead to an RNG desync two screens over.

Samsara: Claiming for judging.

Samsara: Lovely little run! The presence of the attack glitch used in the RTA record, and this TAS's decision to avoid that glitch, does currently disqualify it from standard, but the feedback on the run is definitely positive enough for Alternative. Adding the "glitchless" branch, and accepting!

Spikestuff: Dad 'em up.